medieval artisp213h interlude - artistic revolution #2 the renaissance - realism period medieval art

Medieval Art ISP213H

Interlude - Artistic Revolution #2

The Renaissance - Realism Period

Medieval Art


reminder of the project

I’m testing an idea:• That it is useful and maybe fun to look at the history of physics in the context of

another technique for representing the world.I’ve chosen art, painting, in particularRemember, for my purposes, “represent” implies “insight” - an understanding, which is deeper than just portrayal

• I have many of the characteristics of Kuhnian Scientific Paradigm in mindIn a broad, cultural sense, I think what distinguishes one era from another is

– Members of an era clearly see themselves as different from those of a previous era - a new self-awareness evolves

– Members of an era have a distinct relationship to the physical world - an ability to detect, influence, interact with, and describe the world evolves

• We have already identified one such era - the passage to the Greek period from the Homeric and Presocractic eras

I think that there are 2 more, for a total of 3:– Greek era– Renaissance era– Modern era

These eras do not come about instantaneously, rather they evolve over many years:500BC 0 1000 2000500 15001000BC

Greek Era Renaissance Era Modern Era


distinguishing features 1

Egyptian/Mycenaen/Homeric eras Presocratic, followed by Classical Greek eras:

• The worldview of the times changed from belief in a world in which natural and human events was capriciously controlled by deities to one in which the natural world was:

1. thought to be knowable and 2. possibly constructed from a common, underlying fabric or process.

• Artistic representation comes to be based on both 1. visual input and 2. generic, Ideal forms.

• Scientific representation is based on 1. reconciliation of change with permanence and perfection and2. ultimately the expectation that a System can encompass the whole of nature

(Aristotle)



Medieval times Renaissance, followed by Enlightenment eras:• The worldview of the times changed from one in which

1. the afterlife was the focus; 2. a static philosophical and religious authority ruled; and 3. society was largely closed and rural

into one in which 1. the individual and accomplishment during one’s lifetime mattered; 2. the natural world came to dominate over philosophical and religious

authority; and3. international worldliness cross fertilized cultural development.

• Artistic representation is based on 1. visual input, with an emphasis on faithful portrayal of what’s passively

observed; 2. an expectation that all observers should have the same perceptual

experience; 3. the importance of subject matter and form; and 4. importance of portrayal of individual emotion.

• Scientific representation is based on 1. observation and experiment of motion which is visually apparent and

immediate;2. description in terms of mathematics; 3. a rigor within the practice of experimentation; and 4. the placement of the observer as external to experiment and motion is

based on a fixed Absolute Space and Time.



Enlightenment Modern era:• The worldview of the times changed

1. from one of optimism about the future bred by revolution and technological/economic advancement (Enlightenment);

2. to one of insecurity and introspection resulting from world war and economic inequity (Modernity).

• Artistic representation is based on 1. both visual and cognitive contributions;2. the realization that Observers and Observed stand in close relationship to

one another; and3. the growing importance of Form, Color, and Space as important on their

own rights.

• Scientific representation is based on 1. non-visual experiences, beneath the surface of the passively observed; 2. a recognition that the observer and the observed are intermingled; and 3. realization that a privileged observational position is no longer valid.


Medieval history on one slide

200 400 600 800 1000 1200 1400 1600 1800 2000Copernicus

Boyle-NewtonLeibnitz

BaconMerton School

Constantine converts to and legalizes Christianity 313

Diocletian divides Roman Empire, 300

Augustine - City of God, 427

Aralac, Visigoths, sacked Rome, 410

Charlemagne crowned Emperor by Leo III, 12/25/800

Council of Nicaea establishes Catholic doctrine, 325

Iconoclast Controversy leads to civil war in Byzantium, 726-843

East and West churches split in Great Schism, 1054

Germanic social/political systems gradually established in Europe - rural society with hereditary Kings.

Following Venice, 4th Crusades sack Constantinople instead…1203

Constantinople taken by Ottoman Turks - Istanbul, 1453

rural monastic life proliferates, Benedict, 480

1st crusade, 1095

invasions of Europe: Muslims (south), Magyars (east), Vikings (north)

charter for University of Paris, 1200

Pope moves to Avignon, 1305-1378

Great Schism: 3 Popes, 1378-1417

100 years’ war, Marked transition from feudalism to nationalism, 1337-1453

English peasant revolt, 1381

Silk Road disrupted - Genoese merchants flee siege of Caffa bringing plague to Italy, 1347 - by 1350 1/3-1/2 of Europe is dead.

By mid-14th Century:

1. The authority of the Church is severely damaged due to politics and corruption.

2. The Plague has devastated populations of Europe - leading to permanent reorganization of the social and economic structures.

3. War has caused permanent damage to the authority of kings.

4. Church doctrine has embraced rational thought as a means of obtaining knowledge

Aquinas blends the rationality of Aristotle with the philosophy of neo Platonism, 1270

Tycho-KeplerGalileo

DRAFT


The Renaissance

…was not a revolutionary period in science.• first, people needed to free themselves from the authority in all walks of life

political, religious, economic, social, intellectual…and artistic

Paradoxically, the Renaissance was a period of looking backwards• a flood of classical literature was emerging

due to increased E-W trade, N-S trade, migrationjust at the time that many were expressing unhappiness with society, politics, and the Church

– for 14th century Italians Roman ancestral heritage was strongly felt– they bonded to classical Roman & Greek writers, especially Cicero

• centered in Florencewhich had a growing economic base - even though not a seaport - due to banking and financial genius. This remained in tact even during the Plague.was a proud city, aware of its good fortuneled to a civic effort to support culture~1400-1600, but people argue about that

Became a movement – Humanism – embodied in the writings of• Petrarch in Italy and Erasmus in Netherlands and England


Humanism

A movement, romantic in its espousal• For example, the practically-minded politician, Machiavelli:

“Evenings I return home and enter my study; and at its entrance I take off my everyday clothes…and don royal and courtly garments; decorously reattired, I enter into the ancient sessions of ancient men. Received amicably by them, I partake of such food as is mine only and for which I was born…I speak with them and ask them about the reason for their actions; and they in their humanity respond to me…for the space of four hours I feel no boredom, I forget every pain I do not fear poverty, death does not frighten me. I deliver myself entirely to them…”

The inspiration was Francesco Petrarca, aka Petrarch (1304-1374)• A most un-Medieval thinker

“It is too late to live tomorrow, you must live today.”• He first drew the distinction between his and the previous ages• A poet, priest, Florentine by birth, but raised in Avignon

collection of love poems, Canzoniere, inspired by an idealized, unrequited platonic love of Laurareacted to the turmoil and chaos of European political life

• Discovered lost writings of Cicerofamously began a “correspondence” with the Ancients, public letters in which he addressed them as contemporaries

– Cicero was a man of unparalleled skill as a Latinist and rhetorician - he taught the 14th century curious…how to think, how to write, and how to speak

– He was also a man of action, not a monastic recluse - this had an influence on the 14th century readers as a model for sophisticated and preferred public behavior

de RevolutionabisAstronomia nova

Dialogue concerning two world systems1400 1600 1800 2000

Opus maius PrincipiaOptiksLa geométrie

PrincipiaMémoirs

(Ampere’s law)

Researches in electricityDiscourses on two new sciences


realistic

As a precursor to science, Humanism was a movement of both observation• Unvarnished, objective assessment of human behavior became the goal

and of individualism.• Experience, not scholastic rhetoric, was to be the proper guide for living

“I, for my part, know no greater pleasure than listening to an old man of uncommon prudence speaking of public and political matters that he has not learned from books of philosophers, but from experience and action; for the latter are the only genuine methods of learning anything.” Francesco Guicciardini

Petrarch was scathing in his disgust of the Schoolmen and found himself in a huge fight with nearly the entire French academic community

• Historywas encouraged, read, and created for the first time since the RomansA new concern for detail and self-study became necessary

– from which grew an abiding faith in the potential of human intelligence– It was now asserted that the Individual was preeminent…following one’s aspirations, if

dignified and eloquently stated, took on an heroic cast: going it alone.

• A reorientation of man-cosmos[God said] “I have [not] given you, O Adam, … a fixed location…therefore you may attain and possess, as you wish and you will, whatever location, whatever appearance, whatever gifts you yourself desire. The nature of all other things is limited and confined within laws which I have laid down. You, confined by no limits, will determine your nature for yourself by your judgment.... I have placed you in the middle of the world... I have made you neither heavenly nor earthly, neither mortal nor immortal; thus, as a free and sovereign craftsman, you may mold yourself whatever you choose. You will be able to degenerate into those lower creatures, which are brutes; you will be able, by the determination of your mind, to be reborn into those higher creatures, which are divine.” the manifesto of humanism, Pico della Mirandola (1463-1494) from Oration on the Dignity of Man


Rea

lism

/Im

pres

sion

ism

Italy

Byzantium

France

Flanders/Netherlands

Germany

Britain

proto Renaissance

oil Campinvan Eyck

Carolingian

cathedrals

Baroque

prohibition on representation

N. Ren. DürerHolbein

Dürer travels

Holbein travels

Classical Rome Christian Rome

Renaissance

Mannerist

short Orthodoxprohibition on representation

artistic migrationfrom East

In North: mix of Gothic and Renaissance

PetrarchDante

ErasmusLuther

fusion in Europe in

“International” Gothic

Gothic

Aquinas Bla

ck D

eath

fusion in Europe in

“Romanesque”

Abelard

200 400 600 800 1000 1200 1400 1600 1800 2000Copernicus

TychoKeplerGalileo

BoyleNewtonLeibnitz

BaconMerton School

illuminated manuscripts

Very rough sketch of artistic timeline

Early Byzantine Late ByzantineMiddle Byzantine




PrincipiaMémoirs

(Ampere’s law)


Neo

Cla

ssic

ism

/Rom

antic

ism

Roc

oco

US

DRAFT


Pre-renaissance art

three broad categories:• church architecture and decoration

both east and west

• book illuminationwest

• liturgical imagesboth east and west

• vernacular imageslittle, west


early architecture

two Roman styles were perpetuated• an old circular, domed, central layout (like the Pantheon)

Hagia Sophia, Emporer Justinian, 532

S. Vitale, Ravenna, ca 526, Justinian


basilica

S. Apollinare, Ravenna, ca 533

and the elongated basilica format applied by Constantine• originally a Roman civic architectural form• the original St. Peter’s (Constantine)• St. Mark’s, Venice

St. Mark’s, Venice, 1063


Romanesque (~1000)

“pilgrimage churches”• five during medieval times

housed relics which attracted pilgrims along well-known routes

• constructed similarly along the “Latin Cross” plan

basilica formathuge naves with flanking aisles

• Romanesquebarrel vault - reduced the fire hazard associated with wooden roofs, but required thick, solid wallsonly light from very top

A building boom all over Europe

Saint-Sernin, Toulouse, France, ~1070

apsechoir altarnave

transept

east


Romanesque building was an international affair

Pisa, Italy

Saint Philibert, France

Speyer, Germany

Durham, England


Gothic (~1140) architecture

A style with a definite beginning• Abbot Suger, Benedictine monk and politician, determined to make the Royal

Abbey at Saint-Denis (~ca 8th century) determined to make Saint-Denis as spectacular as possibleworked out alliance between Lous VI and the Church against the Germansplaying on the historical lineage assumed by French royalty to Charlemagne, he targeted Saint-Denis for attention - Both Pepin and Charlemagne had been consecrated there…

• He wrote extensively about his reconstructioncharacterized by considerably more lightnew arch construction with pillars and considerable stained glass (including one of Suger)moved the heavy load-bearing columns outside

• This became the Gothic norm:buttresses outside, allowing for the actual walls to contain windows…and stained glassThis evolves into the distinctive “flying buttress” design


Saint Denis


Notre-Dame, Paris


Gothic construction is the high point, of any era

Chartres Cathedral, 1194

Canterbury Cathedral, ca 1070

Sainte-Chapelle, Paris, 1243 Milan Cathedral, 1386


monastic heritage

Book illumination• Codex

first adopted in 1st century for mostusually theological subjects

• Charlemagne is credited with much critical organization

He instituted rules that all churches would contain schoolsFirst-hand re-imported Roman art forms into liturgical and lay artistic lifeEstablished a compact script for monastic copying: quick, concise, and consistent

fifth century Virgil “Vatican Virgil”, a pagan manuscript

Bible from fifth century VeniceUtrecht Bible, ninth century


up north…

One of the hotbeds of illustration• was nearly strictly decorative

but amazing in detail - distinctive letteringThe Celtic Irish monks produced the glorious Book of Kells


renaissance, small “r”

the Carolingian resurrection of Roman style:

Lindisfarne Gospels, eighth century Carolingian Gospels ninth century Harley Golden Gospels, ninth century

Notice that the older illustration is abstract - that’s no structure that St. John is sitting on

The Carolingian Gospel illustration could have come from a Pompeian wall and the Harley is a fully articulated body…


Romanesque art, ~900-1150

most famous is the Bayeux Tapestry, ~1073-83• a 230’ long story of William the Conqueror’s invasion of England

A secular theme, the story is told in detailed figures

each with a personality and with details missing even from the Carolingian figures

Characteristic of the painting and the frescoes of the period

Illustration evolved, but did not make a large leap of style in the Romanesque period.

In this Wedricus Gospel page, the hints of Byzantine influence are apparent.

Saint John the Evangelist, from Gospel Book of Abbot Wedricus, 1147


meanwhile, in the East

While western Christian art transformed the Classical style

• in the east, it remained largely in tact - with the Greek and oriental influences dominating the Roman

most evident in mosaic creations, such as in S. Vitale - political statements by a powerful “roman” emperor

• prior to the “Iconoclast” controversythe introduction of the Icon became an object of worship, on par with the relics

– originally, Christ, the Virgin, and various saints

– actual “window” to the original portrait of Jesus, done by Luke and portraits of Mary which appeared, presumably by miracle

this heritage presumably fixed the likeness and the styleIcons continue to this day as a part of the liturgy in the Greek Orthodox church

from S. Vitale, Theodosa and her court, flanked on an opposite wall of Justinian and his court.

Virgin and Child Enthroned between Saints Theodore and George and Angels,

late 6th century - one of the oldest and first icons of Mary


middle-to-late Byzantine periodsLiturgical purposes dominated

• The icon became a set pattern with rulessize of figures, according to religious hierarchy, always a gold background, poses fixed, Peter: always rounded beard; John the Baptist, scraggly beard; Paul, always bald; Christ, blue and gold before, purple and gold after the resurrection; Virgin, blue and purple; Peter, gold and beige

• after crusades, west and east influence each other

Virgin and Child Enthroned, 843, Hagia Sophia

Mother of God and Protectress of the Church, Church of Our Lady of the Pharos, Constantinople,11C

Madonna and Child on a Curved Throne, 1280

Christ as Ruler of the Universe, the Virgin and Child, and saints, 1190, cathedral of Monreale, Sicily


the first glimmers

Like astronomy, revolution in art…one man: Giotto di Bondone 1268-1336

• originally self-taughta shepherd, discovered by Cimabue sketching sheep on a rockbrought to Florence and given an artistic education

• he had predecessors Duccio and Cimabuepainters who began to reinterpret the Byzantine style, not quite leaving, but you can see the strain as they try to break out

Maesta di Santa Trinita, Cimabue, 1280

Maesta, Duccio, 1308…the main panel of a large alterpiece




PrincipiaMémoirs

(Ampere’s law)



Giotto

rediscovered how to put 3d objects on a 2d surface• and to endow his subjects with emotion and naturalism not seen for 1000 years

Madonna d’Ognissanti, Giotto, 1310

Faith, Giotto, 1305

In Faith, however (done earlier), he is clearly showing a new eye for realism

This is almost sculpture-esque…the folds have something realistic to do with the body parts underneath, the shading is highly refined…

The baby looks like a baby, and not a little adult

The faces look more naturalistic

But, the theme is still Byzantine, with character sizes appropriate to their religious ranking

this is a real door, there is depth and space is rendered with a sense of mass and dimension


not only realism sneaking in…but emotion - tender, as in Anne’s love for Joachim - and heart rendering, even for angels

• Also…point of view: notice that backs are turnedGiotto has brought the viewer into the scene, to share the emotion - note that there is a hint of a real, human body under the draped clothing; lighting is not correct, but shadowing is attempted - spheres, cylinders, cut in various positions is a problem that he tackled to improve perspectiveThese are real spaces, occupied by real people - not the abstract nowhere spaces of earlier scenes

• This extreme feeling had not been shown since, perhaps, Laocoon.Giotto’s fame was widespread - Florence hailed him, as did Rome

• This adulation for a named artist was also new

Giotto, Meeting at the Golden Gate, 1304-06, Cappella dell’Arena, Padua

Giotto, The Mourning of Christ, 1305, Cappella dell’Arena, Padua


The goals have changed

The program is now one of verisimilitude, representation with loyalty to the truth and to the purpose and underlying theme

This is carried out with artists who are firmly working within Giotto’s research programme:

o The Lorenzetti brothers (Peitro 1320-48; Ambrogio 1319-48) - took Giotto’s reworking of space to new ‘heights’

o Simone Martini - who left Italy to work in the Papal court…remember, in France– His refined approach was an influence in the development of the International

Gothic Style

Ambrogio Lorenzetti, Allegory of Good Government: Effects of Good Government in the City and the Country, 1338-39

Martini, The Angel and the Annunciation, 1333


truly international Gothic style

Sometimes, impossible to attribute, difficult to date• example: the Wilton Diptych (named for the house in which it was found)

English, French, Flemish, or Bohemian?Richard II & two English saints kneeling before the Madonna and Child - like the Three Kings?

The flowers, the ring, the lamb, the gesture of the Child - all symbolic

Limbourg Brothers, July, from Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, 1413

Important for the everyday settings shown, incorporating people’s regular, seasonal activities always interacting with a natural setting.

There is a real castle in almost every month’s depiction.


where we are…

The progress…stopped

Notice some things:

1. The Black Death put nearly a stop on the progress of art - remember the Lorenzetti brothers both dying in 1348?

2. The awakening of representation in the arts coincides with the beginnings of mathematical physics in the Merton School

3. The beginnings of Humanism are right at this point

4. And…the social upheavals begin soon after this.

All of this ushers in the beginnings of the Renaissance - remarkably simultaneously in the North and in Italy.

The Renaissance is usually divided into:

1. Early Renaissance ~1420-1495 (Last Supper)

2. High Renaissance ~1495-1520 (Death of Raphael)

3. Mannerist ~1520-1600




PrincipiaMémoirs

(Ampere’s law)






PrincipiaMémoirs

(Ampere’s law)

Researches in electricityDiscourses on two new sciencesperspective and technology

The Northern Renaissance• not generally considered to be as radically new as Italy’s

Humanism was a major underpinningThe north was still in the grip of Gothic architecture and design

• But, artistically, it’s innovative and a quantum leap toward representationRobert Campin (1406-1444) was the father of the Northern (Flanders) artistic revolutionNotice that he’s solved the problem of shading that eluded the ItaliansImagine how contemporary Portrait of a Woman is with the last gasp of the Gothic! Of course, the technology is the invention of oil

based painting.

Prior, the emulsion that held the pigments in place was egg whites - tempra

The discovery that slow-drying oil could be used revolutionized the practice of painting:

the slow-drying meant that a painter could change his mind

the colorings possible were greatly increased, as was the brightness

shading was more easily simulated

Usually credited to van Eyck, the technology can’t be attributed to any one person.Robert Campin, Portrait of a Woman,

1420-30


the north meant detail

The most was made of the new capabilities• intricate detail was a part of the Netherlands and Flanders art community

attributed to Campin, Mérode Alterpiece, 1425-30 The interior view, with the window to the outside, is to become a Low Countries trademark. Highly symbolic (lilies, mousetrap, etc)


perspective

atmospheric perspective• the first recognition that the atmosphere plays tricks on light of different colors

keeping the foreground bright and the background light, subdued, and indistinct lends a “painterly” technique to bring more of a realistic sense

trees in the distance are a different shade of green…more bluish

van Eyck, Adoration of the Lamb, from the Ghent Alterpiece, 1432

Notice the contemporary setting and that spatial perspective is still not correct - but there is depth which is realistic nonetheless


most famous van Eyck work

Is a marriage contract

This painting is almost certainly legalizes a marriage.

It is laid out as precisely as a legal contract (above the mirror, on the wall is the statement: “Jan van Eyck was present”. He was a witness to the wedding.

It is full of symbolism and surprises.

Jan van Eyck, The Arnolfini Marriage, 1434

The single candle: God’s all seeing eye.

The dog precisely between bride and groom: a symbol of faithfulness

The shoeless stance: the ground of holy matrimony

The bedchamber: home and family.

The raised dress: fertility

St. Margaret’s image carved in the chairback: patron of women in childbirth.

What’s enormously clever, and a portend for art to come:

The viewer is at this wedding

Attention to the viewer of the work is going to be come a design concern.




PrincipiaMémoirs

(Ampere’s law)



the Northern Realism spread

and was refined by students of Campin and van Eyck• most prominent was van der Weyden

Rogier van der Weyden, Deposition, 1435

The whole spectrum of grief is represented

It is not attractive, but it’s also strangely still Gothic with the posturing and body positions: realistic while at the same time somewhat unreal


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medieval artisp213h interlude - artistic revolution #2 the renaissance - realism period medieval art

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